The present invention relates to a suction line heat exchanger, and more particularly, to a microchannel suction line heat exchanger for use in a refrigeration circuit.
The primary components of a typical refrigeration circuit include a compressor, a condenser, an expansion valve, and an evaporator. The evaporator receives a vapor refrigerant from the expansion valve and subjects the refrigerant to a medium to be cooled (e.g., an airflow). The thermodynamic state of the refrigerant exiting the evaporator is typically very near a saturated vapor but often contains a small amount of liquid refrigerant, which if introduced into the compressor may impair compressor operation and permanently damage the compressor.
Some refrigeration circuits braze the liquid tube upstream of the evaporator to the suction tube downstream of the evaporator to form a suction line heat exchanger. Other refrigeration circuits include tube-in-tube heat exchangers. However, these existing suction line heat exchangers suffer from very low effectiveness while entailing relatively high material and labor costs and taking up a substantial amount of space.